


Stonemasonry in Cappadocia

by Anefi



Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [18]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Cyberverse
Genre: Background Megatron/Optimus Prime - Freeform, Background Soundwave/Hot Rod, Cross-Faction Romance, Getting (Back) Together, Other, Pining, Post-Cybermatrix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29437581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anefi/pseuds/Anefi
Summary: Dead End knew that good things didn’t last. Boltheads might say scrap about the fleeting nature of happiness being only more reason to appreciate things you cared about while they were still around, but Dead End had figured out a long time ago that holding onto anything too hard only made it hurt worse when it was eventually gone.He wasn't saying that he skipped out on the whole universe just to get away from Perceptor. Maybe, if anyone asked, he wouldn’t have been able to deny it without lying—but no one asked.
Relationships: Dead End & Whirl, Dead End/Perceptor (Transformers)
Series: Anefi's Transformers Works [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1918825
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	1. It's Spring and I Should Leave

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day! 
> 
> Title from [Dirtbag Catullus](https://www.shatnerchatner.com/p/dirtbag-catullus), chapter title from Modest Mouse, [The World At Large.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNxa9pFwimk)

When the Quintesson visors started falling to the ground and everyone was released from the Loops – when they  _ won _ – Dead End and Perceptor had a moment, caught up in the euphoria, when it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to look to each other first. They crashed together – Perceptor’s strong arms around Dead End’s blocky shoulders, his clumsy hands at Perceptor’s waist, lifting him up – and they laughed, spinning, hope and horror and relief all sparking together. For all their differences, perfectly in tune. 

Then the collected remnants of the Autobots and Decepticons staggered out of their respective parades and into the grey pall of the new Cybertron and immediately started eyeing each other, limping into bristling ranks. It was almost funny. They’d all fought each other for so, so long. Hot Rod’s ragged bunch of B-listers had resisted the Quintessons for a tiny fraction of that time. Yet something in Dead End’s priority trees had shifted so profoundly that going back to defining each other first and foremost by their badges seemed—petty. Stupid.

Like an idiot, Dead End had the thought that it was going to be a huge pain in the aft for their team to browbeat everyone else into working together so they could all have a chance against the real enemy, the Quintessons. It didn’t even occur to him that Perceptor would immediately ditch him like a flat tire. So, maybe that was his fault.

It just went to show that no matter how much you braced yourself for everything to go to scrap, it could always be worse. 

When he set Perceptor down—when Dead End realized what he was doing, and hastily let him go—his hand lingered on Perceptor’s wrist, to let him know he was still there, just in case he—just in case. Perceptor’s shoulder-mounted scope was already aimed toward the congregating Autobots, and he said, “Ah, it seems that Wheeljack survived. That is fortunate. I have a number of things to discuss with him.”

“Oh,” Dead End said, relieved, more than anything else, that in his unthinking moment of celebration he hadn’t made things awkward between them, whirling the dignified microscope through the air like a Cube cube. Of course Perceptor had Autobot friends he was worried about. “Have fun with that. I’ll find you later?” He could check up on—he drew a blank. He could see Clobber from where he was, with Lockdown in a celebratory headlock; she was fine.

“That won’t be necessary,” Perceptor said. “I expect the conversation will take some time.”

“Oh?” he said again, still not getting the hint. The pointed finials at the top of his head dipped. Perceptor was usually very blunt, which made it easy to figure out what he meant, when it wasn’t about science. Direct. Dead End appreciated that. “Well. Send me a comm if you need an extra pair of eyes. Or hands.” His plating was weirdly cold where Perceptor had put space between them.

“Thank you, Dead End. I’m sure I will have all the assistance I require.”

He tugged his hand out of Dead End’s unresisting hold and set off toward the Autobot side at a steady pace, scope scanning the ground for loose cables and scattered debris. Not even a backward glance.

That’s when the shanix dropped.

“Oh,” Dead End said, uselessly. 

Soundwave was still pretty much in charge, once Megatron made it clear he didn’t care if the Quintessons scrapped the planet and all of them with it since he didn’t get to do it first. However Hot Rod had managed it—a feat which Dead End very deliberately never thought about in any detail—having Soundwave on their side was lucky; nobody was going to risk pissing  _ him _ off by taking potshots at the Autobots. Obeying terse commands punctuated by threatening music was already second nature to any ’Con still standing, and the Autobots got used to it quick. Anyway, Soundwave and Hot Rod were busy leading, or whatever, not that Dead End would want to hang out with them anyway, and Clobber was around, but she got along with everybody, and was happy to talk about the long orns of being the only Cybertronians awake on the planet, heroic scrapes and desperate escapes and it was almost unrecognizable, hearing it like that, in anecdotes. Dead End wasn’t interested in groups of people, or talking, or talking to groups of people, especially about anything involving any Autobots who may have been awake, but  _ especially _ any Autobots who he might have been avoiding. 

He told himself that he was avoiding Perceptor, anyway, as if that made it any less obvious that Perceptor was in fact avoiding him.

It didn’t matter. 

He kept his head down.

And when he saw an opportunity to leave the whole stupid universe behind, he took it. No second thoughts. No backward glances. He went to the one mech who seemed even less interested in talking to or about Autobots than he was, who happened to be the best and most ruthless fighter their planet had ever seen, and—he’d followed Megatron for millions of years. There’d been a time, not long ago, when he thought he always would. It was an easy habit to slip back into. Say what you would about Megatron, he wasn’t one for invasive personal questions. If you did what he wanted, he didn’t care why. If you didn’t, he either yelled or shot you. Simple. Direct.

Maybe it should have been obvious that Megatron was actually still obsessed with the Autobots, and Optimus Prime in particular, but if he and Dead End had just stumbled across some new, untarnished Cybertron, or one ruled by Functionists or something, some world they could spend millenia conquering and never so much as mention the universe they left behind, Dead End thought it may have been—whatever. Fine. Skipping straight to a world where Optimus Prime had been dead since the start of the war, where the war never  _ happened _ because the local Megatron hadn’t been such an idiot about him, where the Megatron from his universe was forced to realize that the only thing he hated more than the idea of sharing Cybertron with Optimus Prime was the version himself who ruled in a universe where that wasn’t possible—it was bad luck. It was  _ really _ bad luck. The odds of them peacefully exploding in unspace when they tried to use the multiverse drive had to have been much higher.

The fact that they just so happened to run into  _ and recruit _ the most obnoxious bolthead of a shuttle, who could use the multiverse drive to navigate them  _ back _ —

It was just—

It was the kind of bad luck that was so  _ improbable _ that Dead End couldn’t even be that annoyed he didn’t expect it.

At least when the fence went up, he had half a planet where he knew Perceptor wouldn’t be.

He saw him once. A few times. Leaving Maccadam’s. The last one out, in the early hours of the morning. Pausing in the doorway to shut the lights off, scanning the cleared and empty square, looking up, just briefly, to take in the hard glitter of stars overhead. The bar had moved, of course, since Iaconus rose up and promptly died a few blocks over, so it had taken Dead End a little while to find it.

Not that he was looking for it. He happened to notice.

The new location was close to the border, but not on it. Not accessible from the Decepticon side, which was one way to keep anyone from testing whether Maccadam’s old hospitality rules still applied. It was like a little slice of old Cybertron: Decepticons may have been welcome there, or at least permitted, theoretically, if they could ever figure out how to get in. Assuming they would want to. Perceptor seemed to spend a lot of time there, but it didn’t make sense; Dead End thought that maybe he had a lab somewhere else in the Titan. He didn’t know. It wasn’t his business. 

Astrotrain had a lab too, out on the Lithium Flats, where he worked on harnessing unspace for a weapon to use against Megatron-X. Dead End helped him. What else was he going to do? Any day now, Astrotrain might drag him to yet another universe or just the churning prismatic void of unspace and dump him there to rust, but if not, eventually the even scarier version of Megatron would show up and they’d have to fight him, so he might as well keep busy. It wasn’t anything like working with Perceptor, with his dry humor and thoughtful pauses and meticulously ordered work spaces, so it didn’t make Dead End think about him, and that was fine.

Perceptor’s optics weren’t scorched pits anymore. They glowed a tired blue in the starlight. The targeting reticule wasn’t replaced yet, but that would only be a matter of time; the ceasefire was too uneasy to seriously pretend like he’d never have to shoot anybody again. Dead End watched over the wall from the safe distance of a sniper’s perch as Perceptor turned away and walked slowly up the street, scope still aimed at the ground, like an old habit. 

He was clearly fine. Clobber was in and out of Iaconus all the time, since she was an Autobot now; she probably checked up on him. Clobber made friends with anyone who stood near her for too long. In Shockwave’s lab at the beginning of the war, she’d drawn an eye on a rock and made friends with it. With her looking out for him, and Wheeljack, probably, and all the other Autobots, Perceptor would have— _ all the assistance he required _ .

Dead End went back to the Lithium Flats.


	2. Skipping Like a Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How can you drink to forget your ex when he's just like, right there?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild warning for alcohol-analogue unhealthy coping mechanisms
> 
> Chapter title from The Smashing Pumpkins, 1979

Megatron X did show up, eventually. The dimensional shield prevented most of his freaky clone army from following him, which was good. He took back the other universe Matrix of Leadership almost immediately, which was bad. But then Prime knocked him out, Astrotrain carried him off to another dimension to be tortured indefinitely, and that was two problems down, so, great. They all got to live, until the next stupid thing.

Everyone was just kind of standing around afterward, on the Decepticon side of the wall, when Whirl sidled up to Dead End with a few new blaster scorches and a bent helm fin. One of Dead End’s finials twitched. “Hey,” Whirl said. “Long time no see.”

“Since the hallway,” Dead End said. “Sorry about… that.”

“No worries! Either you’re a really bad shot, or you must kinda like me.”

“ _ Like _ is a strong word,” he disagreed reflexively.

“Hey! I said  _ kinda _ .” 

Some Autobots were collecting on their side of the barrier like scraplets hoping for a chance to start chewing on someone. Dead End edged away from Prime and Megatron’s dramatic posturing contest.

“Hey,” Whirl said, bobbing along after him, “Since we’re best friends now, we should go for a drink sometime.”

Dead End bristled. “I’m not a traitor.”

Whirl clacked a gangly claw toward where Megatron and Optimus Prime were glaring into each other’s optics, fierce snarl to stubborn battlemask, probably much closer than they needed to be. “Are you kidding me? I give this two cycles, three at most.” Soundwave had marched over to the wall, defusing most of the mechs who had been under his and Hot Rod’s combined command without even turning on his speakers. He was talking to Jetfire, of all people, who seemed almost worried as he craned his neck in the direction of Decepticon headquarters. Dead End saw Shadowstriker risk a tiny wave at Arcee. It was a mess.

“Fine,” he said. What else was he going to do? Write poetry with Sky-Byte? The dumb shark only liked haikus.

“Great. Here’s my comm code.” Whirl sent a ping. “Buzz me back so I have yours. After all that great quality time scrapping flying cyber-squids together, I can’t believe we never traded numbers.”

Dead End started to search for an excuse, then remembered who he was talking to. “I’m going to go,” he said.

“Bye,” Whirl chirped. “I’ll comm you in a couple days. Nonstop. Till you answer me.”

Dead End sighed.

Of course, the new ceasefire turned into peace talks, like they’d expected. Of course, the wall came down. It had been a waste of energon anyway.

Of course, Whirl wanted to go to Maccadam’s.

They met up at the pylon closest to where they’d seen each other last. Dead End crossed over to the Autobot side without fanfare. “There are other bars on the planet, you know,” he said.

“Sure,” Whirl agreed. “But I like this one, and you’ll tolerate it, and it’s the place least likely for either of us to get shot getting shots. Come on.”

Despite his confidence, they had showed up at a slow time. The bar was dim, with a few groups scattered through the seats. The low babble of overlapping conversations stalled a little when Dead End walked in behind Whirl, a few glances thrown toward the empty station behind the counter where Maccadam wasn’t, but nobody looked motivated to start anything. Most looked like they were recovering from a party, actually, optics half-lit, slumped a little in their chairs, conversations muted. Dead End slanted a look at him, but Whirl shrugged, unrepentant. He hopped behind the unmanned bar counter and started rummaging, so Dead End guessed it was a serve-yourself kind of day. 

Their usual table—their old table—was—Dead End walked past it. There were a few others open. He picked the one furthest from anybody else. Despite the fact that there were objectively more people in the bar than he was used to, it felt emptier, in some indefinable way. Hollow. Maybe because the titan was dead, or Maccadam. It was just a room.

Whirl came over with two mugs of glowing blue energon sloshing over his pincers and a dented metal bottle wedged against his neck, stamped label worn indecipherable. “What’s that,” Dead End asked warily.

“Nightmare Fuel,” Whirl said with relish. “Last stash on Cybertron.” Dead End made a face as he accepted a mug and held it out for a generous dose. No wonder it had survived the party. “Wheeljack usually makes engex less likely to strip your paint, but he had to repurpose some parts from the still.”

“Skywarp has one running on our side,” Dead End said, swirling the now-reddish mix to let the most powerful volatiles bubble off. It didn’t really help the flavor.

Whirl perked up. “You got their comm code?”

Briefly, Dead End considered how much of a headache the two of them together would be. For somebody else. “Sure,” he said, and sent it.

That’s when Perceptor walked out of the back room.

Dead End nearly choked on his Nightmare mix. “What’s Perceptor doing here,” he hissed, finials flat.

It was almost impressive how malevolent the lunula of Whirl’s optic could be in his version of a smile. “Oh, didn’t you know? Maccadam left the bar to him. He’s always in here.” Dead End tried to scoot sideways so the ungainly mass of Whirl’s cockpit was between them, which had a better chance of success before Whirl turned around and waved. “Hey, Percy!”

Perceptor looked up from putting mugs away. Halfway through a tired nod, his optics fell on Dead End. He froze.

Whirl returned to scrutinizing Dead End, presumably because he enjoyed his pain more. “What happened to you two, anyway? When I got out of the Loop you were, you know. Pretty cosy.”

“No, we weren’t,” Dead End said, scowling at the table and sinking lower in his seat. When he snuck another glance, Perceptor had returned to putting mugs away with the kind of focused attention as he usually dedicated to thirty-dimension polynomials.

“Uh huh,” Whirl said pointedly.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than gossip?” Dead End snapped.

“Nope! Not since the end of the war. Come on, what’s the deal? He won’t talk about it either.”

Dead End glared at his drink. It wasn’t like he’d expected anything else. Why would he talk about it? What was there to talk about? It was over. Or it was never anything, and now it was even less. “I guess he came to his senses.” Maybe even that was flattering himself, implying that Perceptor had ever been invested. Maybe it was wishful thinking to assume he was embarrassed now about the time they’d spent in each other’s space, in slowly more familiar conversation, in the quietly humming laboratories of their Titan, in tiny brushes of contact too calculated to be entirely casual. Maybe Perceptor was just as apathetic about it as he pretended to be. An experiment concluded.

“He dumped you, then,” Whirl guessed.

“I didn’t say that.”

“The ’scope stole your spark.”

“I  _ definitely  _ didn’t say that.”

Whirl gave him another judgmental squint.

Dead End took a determined swig of his drink. His grimace was only partly at the taste. “Yeah. Obviously.”

“Sucks,” Whirl said. “Want to get Star Sabered?” He jiggled the bottle of Nightmare Fuel.

Dead End looked up toward the bar again. Perceptor was gone. “Yeah,” he decided. “Okay.”

The next morning, Dead End was rudely dumped out of recharge when Whirl tripped over him on the floor and fell like a load of scrap, sharp angles of his knees and guns rudely scraping across Dead End’s finish.

His internal weapons sputtered offline again before they’d even finished booting. Ugh. Nightmare Fuel. Whose idea had that been? It was the  _ worst _ .

“Ugh.” 

“Morning,” Whirl chirped, optic casing entirely too close to his, and entirely too awake, and upside down.

“I am never drinking with you again,” Dead End swore.

So a tenday later, they were back at Maccadam’s. A tenday after that, the bar had Skywarp’s engex on tap. Long Haul was slouched in a booth next to Hook and an Autobot medic hissing at each other over a stack of data pads and two jets were flapping their ailerons over by the bar, so he wasn’t even the only Decepticon there, which was—for the best. They couldn’t just let the Autobots have Maccadam’s. It was neutral ground. It always had been. That was the point. How were they supposed to share a planet if they couldn’t even share a bar? If Perceptor didn’t like it, he could—he’d just have to deal with it. 

The first time they went back, Perceptor seemed to deal with it by leaving again. The second time, either because it was more crowded or due to the higher incidence of Decepticons, Perceptor stayed at the counter, busily pouring drinks and cleaning spills, with boisterous patrons leaning into his space despite a tightness around his mouth that Dead End recognized, even if nobody else seemed to. An ugly olive green car seemed particularly insistent. Dead End glowered from his new usual table he sat at with Whirl, on what used to be Perceptor’s bad side, where the scope couldn’t quite pivot to see. 

While he was watching, one of the jets at the counter wiggled a wingtip at Perceptor, which was just. Ugh. 

Not his business.

“I don’t know,” he said to Whirl, when his monologue ran down. “Hasn’t that moon been gone for millions of years? It’s probably in a black hole somewhere.”

“Right,” Whirl said, “but Meteorfire did an episode about it, and Hot Rod thinks—” 

Perceptor disengaged from the green car and marched stiffly out the door behind the bar. 

“Hey,” Dead End said, “Let’s do something about the crowd up there. It’s annoying.”

“Um. Okay,” Whirl said, “but I’ve been told many times that I don’t have face for customer service. Or the dexterity.” He pointed to his optic casing with a claw. “Clobber and I have tried to help out before, but. I don’t know if you know—huh, maybe you  _ don’t _ know—but Perceptor is kind of picky about letting other people in his work space. I had to sit through a lecture after the last time. There was a test.”

He knew that Perceptor liked certain things a certain way. It figured that he would set up a bar like a laboratory bench. “I can pour engex. You just get rid of that little green guy without punching him.”

“Oooh, a challenge.”

Between the two of them, they had the crowd around the bar dispersed within a few minutes, everyone with a mug or cube of something close enough to what they ordered, or at least something. 

When Perceptor re-emerged with a dusty box of drink additives, a little furrow of confusion dug into his forehead when nobody immediately clamored for his attention with new demands. He slowly set the box on the empty counter.

Dead End wasn’t watching. He was talking to Whirl. “Where would you even a ship for something like that,” he said, not even looking in Perceptor’s direction. “The Ark and the Nemesis are both scrapped, and nothing the neutrals are coming in on is big enough.”

“No idea,” Whirl said. “Too bad your friend cleared out with the multiverse drive, though. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

“Not in my experience,” Dead End muttered.

“Well, we wouldn’t bring Megatron. I don’t know why you thought that was a good idea.”

“Hmm.” Dead End shifted slightly. He couldn’t quite make out Perceptor’s expression in the reflection he was studying, but he didn’t think he was looking their way. He’d never know that they—did something for their own reasons that might have, as an unintended consequence, made his night a little easier.

Good.


	3. The World Turned Over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Black Balloon by the Goo Goo Dolls

Dead End woke up the next morning and immediately regretted it. He threw an arm over his optics to protect them from stabbing light. “That’s the last time I’m ever drinking with Whirl,” he grumbled, wincing at the raw scrape of his own voice.

“Hello, Dead End,” he heard. It sounded remarkably like Perceptor: aloof, precise, more than a little judgemental.

He sighed. “And now I’m hallucinating.” 

“Unlikely,” Perceptor’s voice said. “Whirl is aware that dosing the engex with hallucinogens again will result in a ban from the bar.”

“Ha! Classic Whirl.” That sounded like a funny story. He was surprised Whirl hadn’t—

Dead End forced a hard reset of his optics and processing suite. Whirl _ hadn’t told him _ .

“You’re actually here,” he said bleakly. He shifted his arm and winced again when he found Perceptor frowning down at him, familiar understated polish and cadmium red plating and sharp contrasting biolights and the little wrinkle between his optics, habitual frown immediately recognizable even if the optics were different. Autobot blue. 

“I am,” Perceptor agreed.

They were closer than they’d been since—the repair. Dead End still wasn’t used to it. An orn with a medic, and Perceptor was a stranger. It was a good enough patch job, optics matched and piercing, but there was a faint mask of scarring in the nanites of his face that Dead End hadn’t been able to pick out in the dim lighting of the bar or from his perch across the wall, ragged lines and slight discoloration where the living metal had burned and starved. If the self-repair had been reprogrammed right, eventually that, too, would fade, the last vestige of the version of Perceptor that Dead End had known best.

Dead End looked away. Perceptor had dragged over the only chair in the little cubby of a room to sit next to the recharge slab, presumably angled for maximum disapproval, or whatever, frowning down at Dead End with the lights at quarter power.

“How long have you been sitting there?”

Perceptor’s optics flicked to the side. Dead End didn’t know that one. “That isn’t important,” he said. 

“Okay,” Dead End said slowly. “ _ Why _ are you here?”

For a long moment, he didn’t think Perceptor would answer. But what could he do, besides wait him out? Tell him to leave? There must have been something important he needed, to risk coming to this side of the wall. He sat up, tired of Perceptor looming over him. Perceptor was still a little taller, but at least not more than usual. 

“I was hoping you could help me make sense of some data,” Perceptor finally said.

Dead End felt his finials twitch, flipping up in a flash of unwary curiosity and then defensively back. Perceptor startled at the motion, optics tracking the pointed tips, and Dead End realized he’d probably never seen it before. The scope on his shoulder wasn’t great for things in motion. 

“I don’t know why you thought I’d believe that pile of scrap,” he said, just barely holding back from— _ I thought you had all the assistance you’d require _ .

“You’re something of a subject matter expert,” Perceptor said wryly. 

Dead End’s finials went flat to his helm. “Don’t mess around with unspace,” he said.

Perceptor scoffed. “I would have said the same, if you had asked me before  _ you  _ went to mess around with unspace,” he said. “Launching a ship through an unstable Plovtt hole! What were you thinking?”

“What else was I supposed to do? Wait around to get deactivated?” Dead End shot back. 

“I know you’re not a coward. You fought the Quintesson forces with us, before we freed the others from the Loop.”

“I remember mostly running,” he said. Laser smoke and flying tentacles and metal screaming, Perceptor’s hand gripped tight in his. “But I guess you can tell yourself whatever you want.”

“At least I’m not pretending it never happened.”

_ Wasn’t he? _ “It’s not like I was going to be the difference between beating the Quintessons and everybody dying. At least without the multiverse drive, they wouldn’t get the chance to invade any other Cybertrons.”

“Oh, so it was  _ noble altruism _ that compelled you to abandon the rest of us.”

Tired and fed up and aching in ways he couldn’t entirely define, Dead End said, “I didn’t think  _ you’d _ care.” 

Perceptor jerked like he’d been shot. His mouth twisted unhappily.

“Oh, come on,” Dead End said. “I don’t know how it works between Autobots, but when a Decepticon says they don’t need to talk to you anymore and then they don’t, it’s a pretty clear message.”

“You left the  _ universe! _ ” 

Dead End just looked at him. Perceptor’s optics closed and his hand rose to rub at the scarring. “I take your point,” he said. “I suppose—I told myself it was for your protection. Everyone knows what Decepticon justice is like.”

“Oh, really? Who was going to charge me with fraternization?  _ Soundwave? _ If he could untangle from Hot Rod long enough—”

“He’s high command. You’re not,” Perceptor said. “But—no, you’re right. It was an excuse.” 

Dead End didn’t know why it sent a pang through his spark to hear it, even though he already knew. But then, he knew what Perceptor looked like, and it still hurt to look at him. It was weird how you could miss someone who was close enough to touch. “Whatever,” he said. “Ask your question.”

“It isn’t about unspace,” Perceptor said. He sighed. “This conversation isn’t going how I planned.”

“Okay,” Dead End said. “You had a question, though.”

“Yes. I did. I do.” He flexed the small joints of his hands in his lap, running tiny calibrations. “Why did you decide to start serving energon at Maccadam’s last night?”

Dead End glared. “Who told you?” 

“Approximately half the customers you didn’t evict,” Perceptor said. “And the other half complained, which amounted to the same result. Oh, and Whirl.” 

“Great. Just—great.”

“You can’t have seriously thought I wouldn’t find out.”

He was  _ such  _ a bolthead. “I don’t know why I did it,” he said. “Does it matter?”

“I think it does,” Perceptor said. “I think it matters quite a lot.”

Perceptor cycled his vents. It wasn’t exactly a nervous tic, but—it was noticeable. Dead End noticed. 

“I’m highly self-sufficient,” Perceptor said. “I always have been. Aside from—the occasional lab partner, I have been. Unaccustomed to relying on others. None of us survived the war for long without excising that kind of dependency.”

“Sure,” Dead End said. He knew something about that, phantom aches and faces he’d done his best to forget. People always let you down. Sometimes they let you down by getting themselves deactivated in the stupidest ways imaginable, and you never forgave them.

“That is—where I miscalculated,” Perceptor said. “I should have said—I didn’t realize quite how much I appreciated—having you—around. Nearby. Close.”

Perceptor was still looking at him. And kind of looking like he wouldn’t mind if a portal to unspace opened up beneath him. 

“Wow,” Dead End said.

“I’m saying I miss you,” Perceptor said. “When Wheeljack told me that you took the multiverse drive, I was—it  _ hurt _ . I thought I would never see you again, not even in the Allspark, and it hurt.”

“Perceptor,” he said, unsure whether he wanted to clap his hands over Perceptor’s mouth to keep back anything more incriminating or—ask him to keep explaining. To make certain he understood. He was glad he’d only shot Wheeljack a little bit. That had been a good call.

“I told myself that if you ever came back, I would tell you. But you did, and I didn’t. Then you were in Maccadam’s, with  _ Whirl _ , which made it clear that fraternization was certainly not an issue, but you wouldn’t even  _ look  _ at me. I assumed you were just—uninterested in resuming our former intimacy.”

“Perceptor,” he said softly.

Perceptor held up a hand. “But  _ then _ . You took it upon yourself to help, when you didn’t have to. You told Whirl that you still—cared for me. And Hot Rod said that Laserbeak used to see you watching me from over the wall.”

Was Dead End the biggest bolthead on the entire planet? It seemed like a real possibility. “You can’t believe everything Laserbeak says. Or Whirl. Especially Whirl. For a guy with no face, he has a really big mouth.”

“While that is true, the data certainly seem to suggest that—” Perceptor hesitated and drew back, uncertain. He started again. “If you want me to leave and never speak to you again, I will. You will always be welcome at Maccadam’s, regardless of our history. Or I could leave the planet instead, perhaps, if—”

“How can you be so smart, and at the same time  _ such  _ an idiot,” Dead End said. “Of course I don’t want you to leave. I  _ never  _ wanted you to leave. I wouldn’t have left  _ either  _ if you had just—”

Perceptor abruptly stood and stepped closer, right into his space. Dead End couldn’t manage a disparaging comment; he was frozen to the spot, spark whirling, language processing suddenly unavailable as his every sense was flooded with awareness of the breadth of his shoulders and the shape of his wrists and the whir of his mechanisms and how little separation there suddenly was in the charged air between them. With a precise, gentle touch, Perceptor turned Dead End’s face up to his. 

“I like you,” he said. “Very much.”

Dead End’s vocalizer crackled with static under his fingertips. At that point, he had to surge to his feet and kiss Perceptor before either of them could say anything else embarrassing.


	4. Coda

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bonus bit because I missed Clobber!

The next time he went to Maccadam’s Clobber was there, and he ended up talking to her for a while. A few days later they packed a picnic, drove out to the Argon Sea, and got sand in their plating careening up and down the dunes.

When the new sun dipped below the horizon and two moons rose, the two of them were lying flat on the ground, watching ships and stars and satellites zip around overhead. 

“So,” Clobber said. “You and Percy are back together, right?”

Dead End idly dragged his fingers through the silicon sand. He’d been due for a polish anyway. “I guess,” he said, part of him still marveling at the taste of it. “Yeah.”

“That’s good. He’s been  _ really  _ grumpy.”

Dead End craned his neck to look at her. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Worse than usual. Worse than you!”

Dead End turned back to the sky and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm decepticon-propaganda [on tumblr](https://decepticon-propaganda.tumblr.com/), if you want to say hi!


End file.
